The Crux
by lafiametta
Summary: AU. Another night at Citadel Rock Climbing and Furiosa's just about had it. She's had it with her pervy boss and her weirdo co-workers. She's had it with the depressing realization that, because of the accident, she may never climb again. And then a stranger shows up... and the night becomes a little more interesting.
1. Chapter 1

_January 14, 2015_

If it wasn't already gone, there were some days Furiosa would have gladly given her fucking arm not to have to listen to the over-ripe inanity of her co-workers' daily arguments.

"They're ascendin' Dawn Wall, Slit, _Dawn Wall_. It's bleedin' historic, ain't it?"

" _Five days_ off schedule. A hundred monkeys writing Shakespeare could free climb it if they had enough time."

"But they haven't – that's the whole point. No one's ever done it –"

"Look, Nux, if you want to stay in the kiddie pool, fine, worship at the Caldwell and Jorgeson altar all you want. When you feel like playing in the big leagues, we can talk about Honnold. There's someone to hang your fuckin' hat on. Speed-climbed the Nose in under two-twenty five. The man's a beast –"

"Do you think you both could just be quiet for a goddamn minute?" Furiosa asked, sighing. She had already dropped her forehead into her right hand, and now she leaned the rest of her body against the front desk. Hopefully, no members would come in and realize that she had clearly lost the will to live.

"C'mon, Furiosa," Nux said, bright puppy-dog eagerness returning to his voice. "They've been live-tweeting it all afternoon." He pulled his iPhone out of the front pocket of his cargo pants and started scrolling. "I can't wait to see the pictures on Instagram." He turned the screen towards her, as if to share what he had found, but then took one look at her face and pulled it back.

"Instagram?" Slit scoffed. "Fuck, you sound like my grandma." He swiveled around the two of them, and headed towards the back of the gym. "I'm gonna go work on my grips."

With Slit gone, Nux leaned against the desk next to Furiosa, happily occupied with his phone. He was still too close to her – she would prefer that most people keep outside a two-mile radius – but at least he was blissfully quiet now. She closed her eyes, hearing only the low-level electronic dance music being pumped through the gym's sound system.

He wasn't _that_ bad, she had to admit, just too young and excitable, too prone towards insecurity in the face of the other guys' rampant ego-based posturing. But that was something he was just going to have to learn to get over – or, sadly enough, start to emulate. Bravado and bluster was just all too common in the climbing world. These were people who spent their free time hanging off of mountains, for fuck's sake; they were bound to be pretty full of themselves. Nux was the newest hire, just two weeks on the job, and as such bore the brunt of the rest of the staff's testosterone-fueled aggression.

"Don't forget you're shadowing me for that private lesson at six," she told him. "I'll be instructing, but you can belay."

"How many in the group?" he asked.

"Five. All newbies. When they come in, help me get them set up with gear." She looked around; it seemed pretty quiet. "While we're waiting, why don't you go do a safety check on the floor?" As hints went, it was pretty subtle, but he took it, stepping away from the desk and heading off into the main part of the gym, looking to make sure all the climbers were tying themselves in correctly.

Most of the regular after-work crew were here already, including Furiosa's secret favorites, a group of seven women of varying ages who showed up together and kept to themselves as they climbed. Over the ten months she had been working here, she had watched them steadily progress in skill, moving from beginner-intermediate 5.9 climbs to the greater challenges of 5.10s, one of the younger ones in the group cleanly completing a 5.11a just last week. She liked that they were quiet about it, with none of the bare-chested flashiness of a lot of the guys who showed up here, and they seemed to enjoy working together, giving each other tips and pointers once they finished a climb. In her head, she liked to refer to them as the Amazons.

She was glad they hadn't been scared off by the guys, even though occasionally they had to deal with a dumb asshole who thought one of the younger women might fall for some ridiculous come-on. Aside from the general behavior of her co-workers, one of Furiosa's other problems with this gym was the fact that it seemed to be disproportionately populated with major-league tools, guys who couldn't tell a cam from a biner but who thought that by preening around and displaying their pecs they would be met with universal adulation. Every gym had a feel to it, and too often this one gave off vibes of douchebag and Drakkar Noir.

A lot of that, she knew, started at the top. The owner, Joe, and his son, Rick, who also served as the manager – when he bothered to show up – clearly saw this place as investment that continued to pay dividends, if those dividends consisted mostly of opportunities to gratuitously ogle spandex-clad women. She wouldn't be surprised if those fucks had installed spy cams in the women's locker room. That was one reason why, no matter how late she was running, she always made sure to change at home.

It probably didn't matter all that much, though. With her shaved head, she knew most of the other guys on staff assumed she was a lesbian and so left her out of their own collective appraisal of female anatomy. It didn't stop them from making all sorts of disgusting comments when she was around, as if she were invisible, like a piece of furniture. Aside from Ace, the other climbing instructor, and Nux, who didn't know any better yet, she wouldn't mind meeting the lot of them with the rough end of a cattle prod on some bright, sunny day.

The thing was, she wasn't a lesbian. She just had ceased to give a fuck, not just about men, but about much of anything at all. As of fifteen months ago yesterday, there didn't really seem to be much worth giving a fuck about.

Fifteen months, and there was still a box in her closet where she kept the boarding pass stub from her flight to Salt Lake City. Where she kept the ivory Arc'teryx windbreaker with the precise slices up the side and along the sleeve, triage cuts bisecting smears of faded dark brown. Where she kept the bill from her goddamn insurance company that ran multiple pages, and included, among other gems, the eye-droppingly expensive medevac charges. She had argued a lot over that bill. They ended up paying most of it.

It had been a beautiful day – of course, most October days in Moab were beautiful – and she had been so ridiculously excited. There was a crack climb she had been itching to try, a solid 5.11 with several pitches, one that would bring her up to the top of the butte and offer a brilliant view of the red and yellow landscape beyond. Everything had been textbook, until right past the crux on the second pitch. Perhaps she had been overconfident, or hadn't been paying enough attention, or maybe she just got unlucky. Her left hand and wrist had been wedged tight in the crack, keeping her balanced while she reached with her right, and then her footing was all wrong and she was scrambling to keep her feet against the rock wall, and suddenly she was falling, and all she could think about was the slack in the lead line and how it ought to have been catching her by this point. Her left hand just wasn't coming free and she could feel the bones in it begin to snap, skin and ligaments tearing, and all of it making the most god-awful sound that she could hear even as she blacked out.

She had woken up in a hospital bed, her mind foggy with painkillers, and even though she could have sworn she felt both sets of fingers crimping into the stiff cotton sheets, when she looked down, she could only see one. For a while, she had just stared, in complete disbelief. Then she had screamed. And then she had cried.

They tried to console her. They kept telling her it would get better. Just keep up with your physical therapy, they said. Don't be afraid to talk about how you're feeling. Only take the pills when you really need them.

Yeah, _fuck_ _all that_.

There was even talk of a prosthesis as some point, as if that was the solution to all her problems, but none of the doctors seemed to understand that even the most powerful mechanized arm wouldn't keep a grip on a sliver of rock, wouldn't hold her full weight in her attempts to maneuver her body upwards.

So after eight weeks of being shut up in her apartment, feeling constrained and smothered by everything, feeling like she couldn't breathe any more, she went down to her local climbing gym to test the waters. It was pathetic: she had lost so much strength, and the pills had made her so weak. After the first fall, on a climb she could have done in her sleep before the accident, she got up and tried again. After the second fall, all her pride in rough tatters, she got up and tried again. After the third fall, she clumsily unbuckled her harness on the way out the front door and never went back. It was that day, the day she realized she would probably never climb again, that she stopped at the store for an electric razor and then buzzed off all her hair into the bathroom sink.

And even after moving half-way across the country, searching for a place with no memories, the only job she could find that she was remotely qualified for was in this gym, teaching people how to do something she couldn't even do herself. What was that old saying? "Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach…"? How fucking bitter was that? But in her case, it seemed to be sadly true.

The front doors opened widely – she glanced up at the clock and noted that it was six on the nose – and in walked five women, all of differing heights and hair colors. They were chatting happily with each other as they came inside, and Furiosa couldn't help but stare.

They were all so beautiful. And so skinny. But what they lacked in upper body strength they made up for in cheekbones. She was so glad Joe and Rick weren't here. They would never have let these five escape.

"Angharad?" she asked. All she knew was the name of the woman who had scheduled the appointment.

"That's me," said one of the taller ones, a willowy blonde with a face that surely had made grown men cry. It was only after a second that Furiosa saw that she was several months pregnant.

She approached the front desk with the other women trailing behind, noticing that Furiosa's gaze was focused on her stomach. "It's okay, right?" she asked, curling one of her arms around her protruding belly. "To be honest, I had kind of forgotten about it when I booked the lesson."

Angharad's briefly gaze shifted over, and Furiosa could tell that she was looking at her left arm, or what remained of it. She quickly glanced back at her face and said nothing, and for that Furiosa was grateful. If there was anything she couldn't stand, it was pity.

"Uh, yeah," Furiosa responded, taking a moment to catch a glimpse at the four women standing behind her, a redhead, two brunettes, one with short hair and one with long, and a blonde so pale she looked almost alien. "I think we've got a full-body harness in the back somewhere. As long as you feel comfortable…"

"I had always wanted to try this," Angharad said, smiling. "Guess it's good to do it now, before I get much bigger."

Furiosa nodded. "So let's have you all sign the waivers and then we'll worry about gear. You'll all need harnesses and shoes. You can probably share a chalk bag."

She was getting them set up with the paperwork when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the front door open again. She had her hands full with the women, and of course Nux and Slit were nowhere to be found.

"Welcome to Citadel Rock Climbing," she said as the figure approached the desk, her attention still focused on the sheets of paper in her hands. "Are you a member?"

"Um, no," she heard, even though the words were more of a growl than anything else. "Drop-in."

She looked up, losing herself for a moment in a pair of hooded blue-gray eyes. It was strange, she immediately thought, how they managed to look so intense yet so lost at the same time. Taking in the rest of his face, she noticed that he was a bit scruffy around the jaw and he looked like he gave himself haircuts at home with a pair of garden shears, but his mouth… _fuck_ , his mouth. His lips were so full, almost feminine, but hell if wasn't working for him. She could drown in that mouth. Shit, in her old life, she could have happily taken him home and climbed him like a tree.

"Uh, you'll… you'll need to sign the waiver," she stammered. Goddamn it, what was wrong with her? She needed to get a hold of herself.

"Did it last time," he said, half-mumbling. Was that an Australian accent? And when was he here before? It took her a second to realize he must have come in on one of her days off.

"Do you need to rent any gear?" she asked.

With one hand, he held up a chalk bag and a pair of lace-up La Sportiva shoes. No harness, she noted. Figured that he'd be a bouldering guy.

"Day pass is fifteen –" The words stopped in her throat as he slid a ten and a five across the desk.

"Well, uh, enjoy your climb," she said, and watched as he gave her a tiny nod before he walked off.

She made a mental note to check the waiver book when she got a free minute; she wouldn't mind having a name to go along with that face.

The women had finished filling out all the paperwork by the time Nux finally reappeared, so she had him start pulling shoes for them to try on. Furiosa went to the equipment room in the back to see if she could find the full-body harness for Angharad, and when she returned she could see Nux helping the redhead – sweet-faced, her hair in braided plaits – with her harness, adjusting the straps for her and pulling them tight. She smiled at him and he blushed wildly, his pale skin turning red like a stoplight.

Furiosa was able to help the others with their harnesses, Angharad needing a little more assistance in getting the straps around her shoulders and belly, but soon enough they were all ready.

"Are the shoes supposed to be this tight?" asked the long-haired brunette. Furiosa looked down to see that she was tensing and flexing her feet in some attempt to stretch out the leather of the shoe.

"Yeah, it helps keep you gripped to the holds. But the soles are stiff so you can stand on the edge of your toes." The girl didn't look that convinced. "You won't notice after a while," Furiosa added.

She quickly grabbed her wide black bandana – a tradition from her climbing days, even if she was no longer working up anything resembling a sweat while she remained firmly on the ground – and slipped it over her forehead.

They started on the beginner's wall, and after introductions all around, she gave them the basics on movement – keep your arms long, step deliberately, push up with the legs rather than pulling with the arms – before she decided they had listened long enough and it was time for them to put what they'd learned into practice.

"Who's first?" she asked.

"I'll go," said the brunette with the close-cropped hair – her name was Toast, Furiosa recalled – and she stepped forward towards the wall. She was a little shorter than the others, with beautiful mocha-colored skin.

"Okay, so Nux is going to help get you tied in," Furiosa said. "You can see there are two ropes…" – she pointed up to the top of the route, where a rope was looped around a protruding bar forty feet up, with the two ends falling on the ground – "…and you tie in to the one closest to the wall. When Nux belays you – that means he's going to pull the rope and keep it taut as you go up, so if you fall you don't go very far – he's going to use the farther rope. Make sense?"

Toast nodded. Nux hopped over to her side, showing her how the rope was tied to her harness, with a double-backed figure eight and then a safety knot above.

As they were occupied, Furiosa cast a glance over towards the bouldering wall. Not surprisingly, tonight it was bro central, with at least a dozen shirtless guys who were no doubt spending long stretches of time standing around, pretending like they were trying to work out a route in their head, but really just preening for anyone who was watching. Eventually, they would actually have to go up the wall, although they tended to pick routes that they weren't really ready for and fell off after about thirty seconds.

She saw Mr. Down Under starting a V1 route, and a small part of her was pleased to see that he hadn't followed the rest of the crowd by taking off his shirt. He was wearing a supportive knee brace – she wasn't sure how she had managed to miss that before – and for a second she wondered about his injury, what might have caused it. It probably would keep him from doing anything that challenging; it was possible that he might not even make it through the V1.

With both hands on the starting hold, he pushed himself up, and after taking an easy traverse to the right, he reached up for the next hold. It was tiny, though – a nub that only allowed him to place a few fingers – and she saw him struggle to keep it. His right leg lifted, searching for the nearest foothold, and then his other leg – the one with the brace – began to buckle slightly. His grip on the wall was clearly slipping. And just like that, with a great air-filled smacking sound, he collapsed onto the crash pads four feet below.

She turned back towards her group, a little saddened but not particularly surprised. It was hard to come back from injuries. And sometimes, she thought resentfully, you didn't come back at all.

Toast was now completely tied in, and Furiosa grabbed the chalk bag on the ground and offered it to her, explaining how the chalk would keep her hands from slipping on the holds.

"So before you go up," Furiosa said, speaking to the group, "you've got to remember the starting commands. These are just to make sure everyone's ready and safe. Toast, you're going to yell to Nux, 'On belay,' just to make sure the belay set-up is on and he's ready to go." She paused, and then nodded to Toast.

"On belay…?" Toast said, with a note of hesitancy.

"And then Nux will respond –"

"Belay on," he said.

"Okay, that means Toast is going to approach the wall and put her hands on the first hold. It's usually marked where to start." Furiosa watched as she put her chalk-covered hands on the nearest green plastic knob bolted to the wall. "And she's going to give the next command, 'Climbing,' which means she's ready to start."

"Climbing," Toast said, this time with more excitement.

"And then Nux –"

"Climb on," he said, grinning madly.

"So now you go," Furiosa said.

Toast turned her head back. "Just like that?"

"Just like that," Furiosa replied.

"Okay," said Toast, turning back towards the wall and fixing it with an eye of determination. "Here goes nothing."

She was awkward at first, like she didn't know quite where her arms and legs were, but as she started moving, it started to come much more naturally. Furiosa only had to give her a few pointers – just reminders, really – as she started to move up the wall, at first ten, then twenty feet off the ground. At one point, though, she reached for a hold, but found that her fingers couldn't quite touch it.

"It's too far," Toast yelled down. "What do I do?"

"Turn that same hip into the wall and then reach," Furiosa yelled back.

For a second, Furiosa thought that she hadn't heard her, but then she watched as Toast swiveled her pelvis inward, the angle of rotation allowing her to lift her shoulders higher and grasp the hold with the tips of her fingers.

"Well done," she yelled up to Toast, who was grinning with pride.

It struck suddenly, that feeling of a knife slicing into her heart. It cut deep to remember what it had been like, all those little victories, when she felt strong and powerful and full of grace as she ascended up the rock, her muscles straining but never surrendering, her eyes clear and her body and mind working in perfect synchronicity. That was one of the things she had loved best about climbing, the combination of physical and mental demands. As if you had to solve a puzzle, only to realize that you _were_ the puzzle.

God, what she wouldn't give to feel that way again.

Sometimes she wondered why she bothered with this job at all, when it brought back these kinds of memories, like getting a nasty bruise on the same spot over and over again. But what else could she do? Even now, a step removed from it, there was nothing she knew so well as climbing, nothing she felt so primally tied to. It was like a first love: you could never really walk away.

There were times she tried to convince herself that it was enough to help other people discover that they loved it too, to get to watch them grow in their own sense of themselves, the capacity of their own bodies. Who was she kidding, though? It was something, but it would never be enough.

Toast was moving now, her hands strong and feet light, and even as she slowed through difficult sections, Furiosa could watch her brain working, trying to piece together the next move. When she finally reached the top, she gave a little fist pump and all the other women cheered.

Nux let the rope slide through his fingers, slowly lowering her to the ground, and she landed with a soft thud.

"How was it?" Furiosa asked.

"That was awesome," Toast replied, a light sheen of sweat across her forehead. "It was a little tricky there, near the middle. I wasn't quite sure where to go."

"So that part was the crux. That's what we call the hardest part of the climb. That's normally where people struggle the most, where they're most likely to fall. But the important part, right, is to keep going. You did great, though." Furiosa looked back at the four other women. "Who's up next?"

The rest took their turns going up, first Capable, then Dag and Cheedo, and finally Angharad. She was a little worried about Angharad – even though she had watched pregnant women climb a few times, she had never instructed one – but she seemed to sense when to shy her belly away from the wall and the protruding holds as she moved. There was just one moment, as she was nearly at the top, when she turned and smacked her shin right into a big handhold, making a noise even Furiosa could hear from the ground. By the time she got down, the bruise had already turned a pale shade of blue.

"How does it feel?" Furiosa asked, jutting her head towards Angharad's leg.

"It hurts," she replied, carefully bending down to rub it, but smiling all the same.

"Welcome to climbing," Furiosa said, smiling back. "Here, everything hurts."

Now that they had all gone up once, she wanted to move them down the wall to a slightly more difficult route, just so they could keep working on their skills. As they were walking, she noticed that there was a crowd milling around by the bouldering wall, bigger than normal. She wasn't sure what was happening, but she felt like she should go check to make sure everything was fine.

"Get them started on that 5.6," she said to Nux, pointing towards a nice beginner's route she had set last week. "Mother's Milk." Naming the routes was one of her favorite parts of setting them.

As she walked over, she could see that the crowd was even bigger than she had thought. There were at least a couple dozen people standing around, some in harnesses, which meant that people had left the climbing wall to come and watch. Even the Amazons were here, whispering softly to each other, but keeping their eyes on the fifteen-foot high wall.

Furiosa swiveled her gaze and realized what they were all looking at. Fuck, it was him. He was at the beginning of a route, about three feet up, but it was right before the wall turned into a massive overhang, a nearly horizontal roof that forced the climber to cling on upside down as they moved through it. She knew this route: it was a V8, the hardest one they had here, and she would know, because she had set it. The Interceptor, she had called it. She didn't understand; he had slipped and fallen off a V1. What made him think he could even attempt this one?

But he was somehow hanging upside down, cupping his hand around the first hold of the roof, a deep jug that allowed him enough of a grip to take another step. He was favoring his uninjured leg, she could tell, but that didn't stop him from wedging his left foot against the stem of a mushroom-shaped hold, executing a beautiful heel-toe hook whereby the two parts of his foot were jammed tight against the roof and the hold, which kept his footing steady. He was keeping his hips close to the roof, his arms long as he stretched and turned inward, reaching for the next hold, and then the next, moving calmly and fluidly, like water flowing around a stone. And then finally he was turning around the edge, maneuvering upwards, bringing his right heel up against a hold near his waist and pushing up until he had lifted himself to the vertical slab.

The thing was, that wasn't the crux. She knew what was coming, and he did too, apparently, as he moved up into the next set of holds and slowed, and then began to subtly bounce on the balls of his feet. He was prepping for a dyno, a jump that would propel him upwards and allow him to grab the next hold. Without the dyno, he could never have reached it, not unless he was eight feet tall.

She could feel her breath catching in her throat. And then, one explosive second later, he was suspended in the air, his arm extending, barely catching the edge of the hold with the tips of his fingers. He swung for a moment, and then quickly stabilized himself, finding holds for his feet and his other hand. She felt her face spontaneously lighting up in a giant grin. It was stupid, but she couldn't help it.

After that, the rest of the route would be as easy as breathing. There were a couple slightly tricky holds, some crimps that required tight pressure on the tips of the fingers and the thumb, but once past them, he topped out, quickly propelling himself over the edge of the wall. There was a ledge behind that led to a walkway down, and after a moment he emerged back on the floor, instantly met with a general assortment of slaps on the back and congratulations from several of the spectators. He didn't stay to chat, though, just nodded and tightened his mouth in acknowledgment before he walked away and moved over towards a less-populated section of the wall.

The show clearly over, the crowd began to dissipate, and Furiosa remembered that she needed to return to her group. All of them eventually got a chance to climb the second route, although both Cheedo and Dag fell a few times on their way up. The rest of the lesson wrapped up fairly uneventfully. They had all clearly enjoyed themselves, and before they left, Capable had even pulled her aside afterwards to see if she could schedule a one-on-one session with Nux.

She was back at the front desk again, sliding off her bandana, when Nux came over, jumping around excitedly even as his eyes were glued to his phone.

"They did it!" he cried. "They made it all the way up!"

"What?" Furiosa asked, mostly in confusion.

"Dawn Wall! Caldwell and Jorgeson! They've got all the photos up now…" He waved his phone around, as if he somehow thought she could see what was on it.

"Yeah," she said wearily. "That's great." At this point in the evening, she didn't even have it in her to fake enthusiasm.

"Oh, what a day," Nux murmured as he scrolled his finger along the screen. "What a lovely day…"

She was about to rest her forehead in the cradle of her hand again when she looked up and felt her lungs slam against her ribs. The bouldering guy was walking by the front desk, clearly finished for the evening, his shoes and chalk bag draped over his shoulder, a look of tired satisfaction on his face. He was halfway to the door, and before she even realized what she was doing, she heard herself speaking.

"That was nice work," she said. "On that V8."

He stopped and turned towards her, his face clouding, looking for a moment as if he didn't quite understand the words that she was saying, but then he took a few steps closer to the desk. He didn't say anything – maybe he just didn't know how to respond to the compliment? – and she wasn't sure what to do, if she should keep talking or just wait for him to say something.

"It's a rough route," she finally said. "I know. I set it."

He canted his head slightly, light catching in his eyes. "You climb much?" he asked, his accent a little more defined.

"Uh, no," she replied, willing herself not to glance down at her arm. "Not really. Not for a while."

"That's too bad," he said. Something crossed his face, not pity or even condescension, but perhaps curiosity and a hint of provocation.

She had almost forgotten that Nux was there at all, but, of course, he chose this moment to look up from his phone and insert himself into the conversation.

"Y'know," he said, "I was watchin' this video on Climbing Narc – they had a woman on there who was born without a hand, and she was doin' all kinds of sport climbs, crack climbs even…"

Furiosa could have killed him. She was filled with a blinding desire to take that phone and smash it into his face so that he could never utter another fucking word. She had never talked about the accident with her co-workers, and most of them knew enough by now not to mention her arm. And she couldn't believe that he was doing it in front of this guy, of all people.

"Nux –" she started, her voice flinty, full of warning.

"You just need a good partner to help you work through it, get you started," Nux replied excitedly, looking over at her. He swiveled his head, his gaze now focused on the guy, and as he turned his head back and forth between the two of them, it was almost if she could see the idea forming in his brain, his boyish face switching on like a lightbulb. Shit, she had to stop this before it went anywhere further. She could only hope the guy hadn't figured out what was going on.

"I'm sure he's busy," she quietly hissed to Nux, praying only he could hear her.

"Aw, c'mon, Furiosa…" said Nux.

And then, out of the quiet, she heard him, that distinctive half-growl. "I'm not, actually… that busy." Furiosa looked over at him again, watching him watch her. "I just moved here…" He paused for a moment. "If you want, we could meet up this week."

She froze for a second, not really being able to pinpoint the steps that had gotten her to this moment. Was he really offering to partner with her? He didn't even know her. And he certainly didn't have the first clue as to how to try to help her climb one-handed, regardless of anything that could be learned from Nux's stupid internet videos.

But she glanced down at the brace on his leg, thinking about how he had been able to tackle that V8 route. He had clearly figured out some way to work around his own injury. And it was obvious he knew what he was doing when it came to climbing.

But did she even want to try to climb again? In her mind, that door had swung shut, and it might be too hard – in so many ways – to try to open it, even with the help of someone she trusted. Seriously, though, what made her think she could trust him? Why was she even thinking about this? How could this guy, standing there with his bad haircut and his leg brace and his knowing eyes, possibly be filling her with just the tiniest sliver of hope?

That kind of hope was dangerous. It was probably a mistake.

"Um, okay," she said slowly, and then she caught a glimpse of Nux, his eyes wide, bobbing his head with barely contained excitement. "Friday –" she continued, half-coughing as her breath caught in her throat. "Does Friday work?"

He nodded, his mouth pursing in silent agreement.

"Great," she said. "So, uh, what's your name?"

"Max," he said. "My name is Max." He said it cautiously, rolling it around in his mouth, like he wasn't used to saying it very often. But it was a good name, she decided. It suited him.

"Okay, see you Friday. Around six?"

He nodded again and then unceremoniously swiveled back towards the front door. And just as quickly, he was gone, leaving Furiosa standing behind the desk, still wondering exactly what had happened. She couldn't even look at Nux, even though she just knew he had to be grinning six ways to Sunday.

"Stop smiling, you idiot," she said.

To his credit, he busied himself in his phone again, smart enough not to say anything in the face of her obvious ire. After a little while, though, she sighed, feeling slightly guilty. She knew that, in his mind, he had only been trying to help, although being Nux, he had only been able to in that incredibly ham-handed, dumbass, little-boy way of his.

"You still looking at those Instagram photos?" she said, rolling her eyes even as she beckoned him towards the desk. "Let me see…"

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ ** _So part of me was fascinated by the idea of putting these characters in a modern AU setting, so I wanted to try my hand at it. (Hopefully, it worked and I didn't get too technical/not technical enough!) I also was really interested in how Furiosa would have been as a character in the (somewhat) immediate aftermath of losing part of her arm, because in the movie, they seem to imply that a fair amount of time had passed. And thanks to Miller et al., we're all about "engage to heal," right? :) On a more minor note, the Caldwell/Jorgeson free-climbing ascent of Dawn Wall (a portion of El Capitan in Yosemite) is a totally real thing that happened last January - and I think Nux is right to be super excited about it!_**


	2. Chapter 2

It was five until six and Furiosa had been sitting in the parking lot for the last fifteen minutes. She wasn't quite sure why she had gotten there so early, but here she was, and like hell she was going to wait inside where everyone could see.

The truck's engine was off, but she had kept the radio on, set to some classic rock station she tended to play just because it was the least objectionable of all the options. The tape deck was broken – she couldn't remember it ever working – so it was the radio or nothing at all.

On the other end of the bench seat were her old harness and climbing shoes. She was trying not to look over at them too much because it caused her chest to tighten in very restrictive and unpleasant ways. Instead, she stared out the driver's side window and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, keeping rough time with the beat, until the song began to fade out and another began.

She took that as a sign that she should turn the radio off and go inside, and then, with a soft breath, she heard the opening guitar chord. She leaned back against the napped cushion of the headrest and waited for the first lines, the words she still knew by heart.

" _Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night_

 _And wouldn't you love to love her?  
Takes to the sky like a bird in flight_

 _And who will be her lover?"_

She was nine years old, living with her mom in some shitty thin-walled studio apartment in downtown Seattle, but even then her mom somehow made it magical, filling the place with creeping green-vined plants, jumping on the bed with her and dancing around the room with clasped hands as Fleetwood Mac warbled in the background. Her mom had loved Stevie Nicks, all that witchy woman, fringe-shawled bohemian mystery.

Mary Jo Bassa had always liked imagining herself as a free spirit, going where the wind took her, even if it had only ever been partially across the state of Washington. At seventeen, she had left the rural, off-grid commune where she had been born and hitchhiked her way to Seattle, first losing herself in the unmuzzled roar of the punk scene, and then finding herself alone and pregnant. Furiosa had never known who her father was, and always wondered if her mom hadn't either. But Mary had made do as best she could, scouting out cashier jobs, waitressing, cleaning office buildings at night. No job lasted that long, not with her blunt readiness to talk back to her supervisors, and there had been different apartments over the years, some worse than others. Everything had been good, though, in the tight circle of each other, up until one rainy day in February when Furiosa was thirteen.

A mugging gone wrong, they said. _How the fuck does a mugging go right?_ her adult self sometimes wants to scream. Regardless, there were no leads, no suspects.

For a day or so, the commune had seemed a possibility, until the social worker discovered that it had disbanded years earlier, its residents scattered to places unknown, and so she was packed up to live with some distant relatives she had never met. But Furiosa had hated them, hated their dark house with its cramped yard and broken chain-link fence, and had split the minute she turned eighteen.

" _Taken by_

 _Taken by the sky –"_

Most of what she remembered of her childhood – besides Stevie – was the green and the rain, the blurriness between sky and sea, the curtains of pine trees and the soft sweep of ferns, the slight give of winter-damp earth under her shoes.

Here, though, everything was brown, dry like a rattling wheeze, dust clouding the sky and sticking to every imaginable surface. It wasn't hard to believe that the entire state had been going through a drought for years. Rain, when it came, only appeared in potent blasts, and it quickly soaked into the thirsty ground, leaving little trace that it had been there at all.

She took a deep breath as the song ended, feeling a tiny shake in her exhalation. She shouldn't have stayed to listen, not when it brought back things she had spent too much time trying to forget.

Grabbing her gear, she stepped out of the truck and onto the black-top of the parking lot. For the past two days, she had tried not to think about the fact that she had agreed to meet up with someone – a man, one she didn't even know – so she could work on getting back on the wall. It hadn't been very successful. Yesterday, near to closing, she had gotten so panicky that she had even snuck a glimpse at the waiver book in the hope that he had left a phone number. Maybe she could just call, cancel the whole thing. Of course, there was nothing, no number, no email, not even a real street address, just a P.O. box in Indio. And Max _Rockatansky_? What kind of weird-ass name was that?

As she neared the front door, she could feel the familiar fear winding its way up her throat like a snake. It pulled at her, whispering at her to get back in her truck, to drive away and not look back.

But for some unfathomable reason, she kept walking, placing one foot in front of the other, until the metal of the door handle was cool and smooth against her hand and she pulled it with enough force to displace some of the breath she held tight within her chest.

Blinking her eyes against the sharp florescent lights, she looked over and saw Nux behind the front desk talking to two guys, both with shaved heads… _fuck_ , it was Slit and Morsov.

Her own concerns momentarily forgotten, she walked towards them, not saying a word, not even when they all looked up at her and Morsov pulled his arm around Slit's shoulders, grinning.

"What d'you think?" Morsov asked. "Awesome, huh?"

Furiosa raised her eyebrows. "I guess this means you both did it on purpose?"

"Not just us," Slit said. "Elvis, Coil, a couple of the other guys who were here last night."

"You _all_ shaved your heads together?" she asked, unable to keep the derision from her voice. As she spoke, she noticed Nux had angled himself slightly away, his gaze dropping down towards the counter.

"Yeah, well, after closing we went out, had a few, and after last call ended up at Morsov's place," Slit replied. "It was my idea, though." He grinned like a little lizard and then rubbed the top of Morsov's shiny head. "And chicks are into shaved heads. That's why you did it, huh, Furiosa?"

For a brief moment, she contemplated jumping over the desk and breaking his jaw, just so it would knock that disgusting, lewd smirk off his face, but she knew that Slit was just the type to press charges.

"You guys shave your balls too, while you were at it?" she sneered. "Oh, wait, you'd have to _have_ balls to do that."

"Damn," said Morsov. "Why you gotta go from zero to bitch in, like, sixty seconds?"

She could feel the rage curdling through her body, tingling, itching into her legs and down the length of her fingers. At this point, she was truly regretting walking in the door at all.

"You two need to get the fuck out of my sight," she said, her eyes narrowed into icy furrows. "Right now."

"Why should we leave? We're working," said Slit, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "What are you doing here, anyway? You don't work today."

" _Get… the fuck… out… of my sight_ ," she repeated, emphasizing each word as if she were speaking to five-year-olds. Horrible, repulsive, man-sized five-year-olds.

"Fine," said Slit. "We'll just leave Nuxy here to cover the desk for the next hour or two." He sidled up behind Nux and gleefully mussed his dark hair so the ends stood up in multiple directions. "Give us some time work on our grips."

As Slit and Morsov walked off, Nux tried – unsuccessfully – to flatten down his hair against his head.

"Can't believe they did it without me," he mumbled.

"What?" she asked, nearly snapping at him; the anger was draining from her, but not quickly enough.

"I mean, they could've called me. I would've come over to Morsov's."

She remembered that Nux didn't work yesterday, so he must have missed the whole thing.

"Really? You want to shave your head?" she asked in disbelief.

"It looks cool," he replied, looking over at her with his wide, ridiculously blue eyes. "I mean… doesn't it?"

"Don't do it, Nux," she said. "You're just going to look like someone stuck a marshmallow on top of a popsicle stick."

"But you shaved your head… kind of…" he said, his voice trailing off. She could tell he was unsure about stepping into the realm of her personal details.

"That's different," she replied. She could sense a _why?_ about to form in his mouth, and she wanted to cut him off before he wandered any further into the topic. "Look, just don't do it, okay? And why would you want to look anything like those assholes?"

He didn't say anything, just nodded sheepishly, but she knew he would probably end up doing it anyway. Boys like Nux, they wanted to belong to something, and weren't always very picky about what it was. It was unfortunate that he was going to end up attaching himself to that whole crew with Slit and Morsov, but working here there weren't many other options, not unless he wanted to follow Furiosa around all the time. And there was no way she was going to let that happen. Nux was a harmless enough kid, but she had her own problems to deal with. She wasn't going to be responsible for him, too.

Pulling himself out of his thoughts, he looked over and glanced at the harness and shoes she had dropped onto the desk.

"Oh, right, that's today, huh?" he asked, a smile starting to creep across his face. "You excited?"

All she could do was glare at him and hope that it was enough to convey her current level of excitement.

"Uh, okay... But where's the guy?" he asked, craning his head around the gym. "You think he forgot?"

 _Shit, maybe he did forget_ , she thought. _Oh, please, let him have forgotten_. Then she could sprint out of here and pretend the whole thing never happened. She wouldn't have to think about Seattle or Slit and Morsov or getting back on the wall. Everything could just go back to… well, normal wasn't the right word, but whatever the hell her life was at this point.

"Maybe," she replied, leaning against the front of the desk. "If he doesn't show in the next two minutes, though, I'm going to –"

"Mhmm, hey." There was that deep growl again, this time right behind her ear.

Furiosa swiveled around in surprise, catching a brief flash of him, before she accidentally knocked the elbow of her stump against the hard laminate of the desk, feeling a crack of pain deep against the bone.

"Oh, fu…" she muttered, quickly rubbing the elbow with her right hand. She looked up at him, realizing he had just seen all of that happen. Could this day get any fucking worse? "I mean, uh, hi… You're here."

"Mhmm-hmm," he replied, and then nodded towards her elbow, still cradled in her palm. "You okay?"

"Uh, yeah," she said. The pain was starting to dull, fading into a residual sting. "Fine."

He was wearing a black t-shirt, dark-inked tattoos coyly peeking out underneath the hem of his sleeves, along with athletic shorts and some pretty banged-up looking flip-flops. He still had on the knee brace and his haircut was still ridiculous, but it looked like he had shaved down some of the scruff, even if what remained might charitably be described as an eleven o'clock shadow.

He was standing closer to her than she normally would have preferred, although she didn't move to step away. They were about the same height, but even so he had a solidness about him, a quiet presence that seemed to say something more than anything that could be spoken out loud. She swallowed, feeling strangely aware of the space between them.

With surprising difficulty, she tugged her gaze away, gathering up her gear on the counter and then turning back to face him. "You ready?" she asked.

"Mhmm, yeah… Just need to, uh…" – he pointed towards Nux, still standing behind the desk – "…get my pass." He dug his hand into his pocket, presumably for his wallet.

"Don't worry about it," she said, throwing her gear over her shoulder. "Nux, can you just put him down today as a guest on my account?" If he was going to take time to climb with her, the least she could do was make sure he didn't have to pay for it.

"Sure thing," Nux replied, sporting a wider grin than Furiosa would have liked.

"Okay, then," she said. "Where should we start?"

"You got somewhere quiet? With some space?"

It was Friday night, so the place was pretty busy; there wouldn't be a ton of places along the wall where they could spread out and not get in the way of other people's climbs. But she realized she wanted to stay as far away from public view as possible, without having to worry about random people – or, fuck, even Slit and Morsov – wandering through.

"Yeah," she said. "We've got something like that."

She took him around to the side of the gym, a little past the locker rooms, where part of the wall wrapped around into an alcove. They normally reserved this space for classes and large group lessons, but there was no one there now, just a large posted sign telling climbers that this part of the wall was off-limits. The alcove wall was all intro routes – nothing harder than a 5.7 – and she could feel a part of herself screaming at the idea that this was where she would have to start from.

She found a spot by the wall and dropped her gear on the ground, taking her harness in hand so she could start detangling the straps.

"You won't need that," he said.

She looked over at him, not letting the harness drop from her hand. "Why not?" she asked.

"Start small at first," he replied. "Near the ground. No ropes."

"So just traversing?"

Whatever she had envisioned as her first step in this process, just going back and forth across the wall a foot or two off the ground definitely wasn't it. Traversing was just a warm-up exercise, not normally the main activity. She looked up at the wall, with all its big jug holds, not understanding how the prospect of doing something so easy could be equally insulting and terrifying.

"And some drills," he added.

"What drills?" she asked, skepticism creeping into her voice.

"We'll see… First, though… you get back on the wall."

 _Get back on the wall. Fuck._

She dropped the harness from her hand and then swiped her bandana from where it lay in the pile by her feet. If she was going to do this, she was at least going to do it with her war paint on.

As she found a seat on the ground, she reached behind her for her shoes. She had only ever worn them the one time, so they still looked brand new, without any of the normal scrapes and scuffs she associated with climbing shoes. Although she had always preferred lace-ups, this pair had velcro straps across the top, making it easier for her take them on and off with just one hand. Once on, they felt stiff against her skin, the leather still young and tight, the narrow rubber soles offering barely any give as she flexed and pointed her feet. The familiarity of the feeling was painful, a rough scour against her heart. She was already on edge tonight, after thinking so much about her mom, and all of this was only making her feel more raw and unsteady. She sat there for a moment, not moving, waiting for the mixture of emotions to pass through her.

He walked slowly over towards her. "Okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," she answered quietly. If there had been words to describe what she was feeling, she still wouldn't have been able to say them.

He leaned over and lifted out his hand, his palm open, fingers curled in a little. At first, she couldn't figure out what he was doing. A moment passed until she finally realized, but even so he hadn't pulled his hand away.

It was nothing, really. Why did it seem like so much?

She reached up and grasped his hand around her own; it was warm and solid, rough calluses lining the creases of the finger joints. A second later, he had hauled her up to her feet, their bodies coming to a stop in sudden proximity to one another, and then he dropped her hand and took a step back.

He waited, his eyes on her expectantly, and then he nodded towards the wall behind her.

With a quick nod of acknowledgment, she turned back towards it, watching as all the different colored holds swam into and out of focus, like a map with too many landmarks. Her heart was beating faster, the sound of blood starting to echo in her ears, and she tried to take a few deep breaths, willing herself to calm down even as she scanned the wall for a starting point. A little to the right of her line of sight was a sturdy red-colored jug and she reached out and curled the tips of her fingers into it, the lightly chalked surface smooth against her skin. Lifting her right leg, she placed her toes against the edge of a low foothold and began to ease some of her weight onto it. As she raised herself up off the ground, her left leg lengthened and her foot searched for the ideal spot on an adjacent hold to land.

But there was something off, something in her positioning or her ability to keep herself stable against the wall. Without the support of her left hand, she couldn't get a feel of how she ought to move. Her right hand was gripping hard, too hard, against the hold, but even then she had no purchase with her left foot and her right was losing its stability entirely. There was the awful feeling of knowing she had to let go, and then she did, a curse of words dying in her throat. She had only been a foot and a half up, but even still it was painful, the jarring sensation of her feet thumping against the ground.

Out of sheer frustration, she slung her hand onto the wall again, pushing her feet onto low-lying holds, but even as she did it, she knew she wouldn't be able to stay up, to find the position and strength to keep herself against the wall. As she fell for the second time, it was less of a surprise, but even still she couldn't help smacking the side of her fist against the flat surface.

"Shit," she said softly. She had prepared herself for this, playing out this scenario in her mind, but the feeling of it was so much worse.

"Mhmm," he murmured behind her. As her heart sank into her chest, she realized what was even worse was knowing someone had watched the whole thing.

"Yeah, I'm sorry," she replied, even as she continued to stare at the wall. "It's just… It's been too long. I've gotten really weak." She paused and sighed. "This was a dumb idea."

"Hey," he said, and she turned towards him, watching as he nodded his head towards the ground. "Sit."

She eyed him cautiously, not sure what he was up to, but even so she followed him as he crouched down and lowered himself onto the floor.

"If you don't climb much," he said, crossing his legs in front of him, "what do you do?"

"Do for what?" she asked in confusion. Was he asking her what she did outside of work? She didn't understand: he couldn't possibly be hitting on her, could he?

He nodded towards her, canting his head a little. "Training. You do something."

"Oh," she replied, relief flooding into her brain. "Yeah, well… just basic conditioning. Some running. And strength exercises."

After years of climbing, her body had simply become too accustomed to activity, too used to the gratifying sense of going all out and being completely spent. Within a week of moving here, she had joined one of those anonymous corporate gyms where she could come and go without anyone really noticing, run out her miles on the treadmill until her legs shook, sweat her way through endless sets of crunches and lunges, weighted squats and machine-aided chest presses.

"How often?"

"Five, six days a week."

"For how long?" he asked. Normally, this many personal questions would have started to irritate her, and she wondered why she didn't really seem to mind.

"Hour, hour and a half. Sometimes I lose track of time."

He pursed his lips and nodded, taking a moment to rub his hand against the scruff of his jaw. "You're not weak," he said.

"What?" she asked.

"It's not strength. It's balance. You're not balanced."

She looked down at herself, at the empty space where her left forearm and hand ought to be, and then stared back at him, her gaze narrowed, the only message written in it consisting of _yeah, no shit_. But even her glare didn't seem to faze him, as he simply shrugged his shoulders, florescent light catching in his blue-gray eyes.

"You need to find your balance," he said.

She understood what he was saying, but she didn't entirely buy it. There was no way anyone could go more than a year without climbing and not lose a ton of strength. She could see it in her own body, in the loss of definition around the muscles of her shoulders, along the lines of her quads and calves. And she was more inclined to trust herself, not the five-minute diagnosis of some guy off the street who apparently saw himself as some kind of climbing Yoda.

"So…" he said, directing his eyes back towards the wall.

"Fine," she replied brusquely, pushing herself back onto her feet, and she walked back to the same section of the wall, filled with a growing determination to stay attached to it for a while longer. Failing that, she was also more than willing to come back with a sledgehammer and pound the whole thing into ruin.

She placed her fingers against the red hold again, trying not to over-grip, and then stepped up onto the first foothold, making sure it felt secure before she started to lift.

"Shift your weight to the right," she heard him say behind her. As she extended her stance, she moved her body in that direction, until she was standing entirely on one leg, the other foot flagged out, toes tracing against the wall for balance.

"Find a hold for your left foot, then shift left," he continued.

"Wax on, wax off," she muttered under her breath, but even so she followed his instructions. She was just happy to be stable on the wall for more than a few seconds.

"Reach for the next hold," he said.

"If I let go, I'll fall," she groaned. She was already beginning to feel an uncomfortable pull in her right biceps and forearm.

"Keep balance with your left arm. Press the end against the side of a hold as you lean."

Her grip on the right was already shaky, and once he started talking about her left arm, it only made her more self-conscious, distracting her from what he was asking her to do. She lost her concentration, and slipped backwards a little, catching herself in a crouch just before she landed ass-first on the ground.

"Fucking… fuck," she cursed again, this time louder, not really caring who heard her. She had gotten just a little bit closer, thinking for a second that the whole thing was actually going to work, only to fall off yet again. It was killing her not to be up on the wall – she wanted it so bad – but she knew enough of life to know that just wanting something, however desperately, was never going to be enough.

"Again," he said.

She glared back at him.

"It's up to you," he offered, with a slight shrug in his shoulders. She knew he probably wasn't trying to be purposefully irritating, but damn if he wasn't succeeding at it. Who the hell did this guy think he was, anyway? What kind of weirdo just offered to help total strangers like this? What did he really want with her, when it came down to it?

She was still bristling as she went back up on the wall, frustrated beyond belief as she continued to make a few moves that looked for one brief moment like progress, then falling right off again once she lost her grip or position. Over and over again, she struggled and shook, trying to regain some sense of balance, hoping to remember who she was and what she had been able to do before the accident. He stayed behind her, mostly watching, offering some advice on the movement of her limbs, the placement of her feet, and every time she fell, he told her to go back up again. It was all too much, too much to ask of her. He didn't know her – why was he pushing her like this? Everything was exhausting, and after a while she couldn't bear to think about how it had been, before, and everything that had happened in between that was making this so hard. There was no joy in what she was doing, none of the excitement and purpose she had lived for before, that she had thrived on. For every step she took, there was a misstep, one tiny moment where she felt entirely defeated, not just by gravity, but by her own weakness and sense of failure. She wasn't making any progress at all, just failing again and again, her sliver of hope extinguishing like a sputtering flare in the darkness.

What had ever made her think that this was a good idea? Not climbing at all, as awful as it was, was nowhere near as bad as thinking she might be able to do it again and then realizing it was never going to happen.

She had been going for nearly two hours. Her legs were shaking. She felt tired and weak – _fuck his stupid diagnosis_ – too weak to keep doing this. She needed to get out of here, to go home and forget everything and everyone. She needed to be alone in whatever this was she was feeling, some awful mixture of disappointment, sadness, and rage.

"I'm done," she said, rubbing her right hand against her leg, hoping to ease some of the rawness where the holds had pulled against the skin.

"Mhmm," he replied, nodding. "So… next time we can –"

"No," she cut him off. "No next time. I can't… I'm not doing this any more."

"You want to quit?"

"Quit?" she sputtered. She could feel her body beginning to grow warm with pinpricks of anger. "You call this quitting? I've been falling on my ass all night. I think that's enough to know that this was all a big fucking waste of time."

"Mhmm," he mumbled, raising his eyebrows with an air of skepticism. She wanted to wipe that stupid expression off his face.

"What?" she said, the volume of her voice rising. "You have something you want to say to me?"

He looked straight at her, his eyes calm and focused, as if he was taking her all in, and when he spoke it was quiet, the sounds clipped like they had been sliced clean away.

"You think you're the only one that's broken."

The words snapped at her, unleashing waves of anger and hurt, until she was entirely blinded by the emotions clawing into her chest.

"Screw you!" she hissed. "You think you know how I feel? You think you know anything about me?"

She couldn't take it any longer, looking at his fucking face, him just standing there as if she owed him something. Anger coursing through her, she swiped her harness of the ground and stalked out the alcove, not knowing where she was going, but through the fog of it all knowing that she needed to be somewhere far away from other people.

The sign for the women's locker room appeared on her right and she slammed the door open, seeing no one inside. She dropped onto a bench, feeling her ribs so frozen within her chest she could barely move. Her face felt hot and tight and there was a seizing pressure against her eyes, holding something even stronger and more dangerous at bay. She dropped her head between her knees and tried to breathe for a while. Eventually things loosened, and air slowly found its ways into her lungs, her anger waning as the minutes passed in stillness. She swiped her hand across her forehead and pulled off the bandana; it was still damp from all her effort on the wall.

Her shoulders were heavy, weighted with fatigue. Sometimes it was too much, all the things she carried on them.

The door opened and she could hear a mix of feminine voices. They seemed to be moving towards the other side of the locker room, but even so, she knew that she should probably leave.

"Hey… are you okay?"

Furiosa glanced over to see that one of the women was talking to her. She recognized her; it was one of the younger Amazons. She was standing next to two others, older women with white hair. Furiosa felt a flush of embarrassment; if someone was stopping to ask how she was, she must look awful.

"Yeah…" she replied. "It's just been a hard day."

The Amazon nodded, pulling her long, dark hair out of a ponytail. She didn't seem to need any further explanation, and for that Furiosa was grateful.

"You work here, right?" she asked.

Furiosa nodded.

"Yeah, I've seen you around a bunch. I'm Val, by the way," she said, and then pointed towards the other two women. "And that's K.S. and Giddy." Both women nodded at her, offering small smiles.

"Furiosa."

One of the older women – Giddy, she thought – unzipped her long-sleeved top layer, revealing a dizzying array of tiny tattoos placed across her arms and chest and up into her neck. Furiosa couldn't help but stare; she had never seen anything like them. They were like tiny lines of text, scripted writing so small she couldn't even make out the words.

The older woman caught her glance and looked right back at her, a coy grin reaching across her mouth. "You gotta remember the past somehow," she said.

Furiosa offered a tiny smile back, her first of the night. She wasn't sure what kind of past might require you to write it all down across your body, but it must have been impressive. She didn't want to think about what hers would say. It wasn't anything she could ever imagine wanting to keep with her all the time, visible to everyone, there when she looked in the mirror each morning.

"Nice to meet you," she mumbled. "Sorry… excuse me."

She jumped up quickly and shot out of the locker room, first checking around the corner in the alcove. It was empty, no evidence anyone had been there at all tonight.

The bouldering wall was full of the regular crowd – tons of shirtless dudes, as always – and Slit and Morsov were still lingering around the angled wall with all the grips, the florescent lights shining off their bald heads. But she didn't see him there.

After making a full circuit of the gym, she found her way back to the front desk. Nux was leaning against it, thumbs scrolling along the surface of his phone, and he looked up as soon as he saw her approach.

"Hey," she said. "That guy I was climbing with, did he leave?"

"Yeah," he replied, nodding. "Ten minutes ago, maybe."

She stared out the front windows. It was full dark outside; there was no one coming or going, just the parking lot lights illuminating rows of empty cars. _Shit_.


End file.
